Producer price inflation drops to 7.1% in November

The Producer Price Inflation (PPI) for Ghana reached 7.1 percent in November 2017.

This represents a 1.2 percent drop in the 8.3 percent recorded in October 2017.

The Producer Price Inflation measures the average change over time in the prices received by domestic producers for the production of their goods and services.

The Acting Government Statistician, Baah Wadieh explained to journalists that the increased activities in the mining and quarrying subsector led to the drop in the producer inflation.

“In December 2015, the Mining and Quarrying subsector’s inflation declined to record 15.6 percent but declined consistently to record 20.8 percent in March but declined again to 4.1 percent in July 2017. Since then the rate has increased consistently to record 14.4 percent in November 2017,” he said.

Meanwhile the Mining and quarrying subsector recorded the highest inflation of 14.4 percent.

This was followed by the Manufacturing and Utilities subsectors with 7.3 and 0.5 percent respectively.

During the month of November, five out of the sixteen major groups in the manufacturing sub sector recorded inflation rates higher than the sector average of 7.3 percent.

These include the manufacture of coke, refined petroleum products (27.7%); the manufacture of machinery and equipment (26.1%); manufacture of motor vehicles, trailers and semi-trailers (20.4%).

Others are the manufacture of basic metals (14.4%) as well as the manufacture of furniture (11.5%).

Meanwhile the producer price inflation for petroleum subsector was -0.2 percent in November 2016.

It has experienced mixed growth and in November 2017, it declined to 27.7% from the 36.9% recorded in October 2017.